MS Dhoni, the Indian cricket captain sounds quite confident on the eve of T20 campaign. After the convincing win of India in the warm-up match against West Indies on Thursday in Kolkata, Dhoni spoke about the things that set his team apart and joked about his habit of collecting stumps.
When Dhoni was asked why he collects stumps from the pitch and takes it with him, he says that he has his post-cricket plans. He says “I don’t mark the stumps that I collect. (Post-retirement) I’d watch the matches, look at the stumps and say ‘ok, this is from that match’. I have enough to keep me occupied for years.” However, there is a different theory attached to it.
Why does Dhoni collect stumps?
Dhoni has given the same answer before too. However, there is a story which not many people know. The Indian captain was studying at Shyamali’s DAV Jawahar Vidya Mandir (Ranchi) and that time he belonged to a very middle class family. He had a best friend named Kulbinder Singh, the son of his school’s Nepali watchman. At that time, Dhoni used to play Badminton and football and wasn’t interested in Cricket. Kulbinder used to play galli cricket with his friends. An inter-collegiate badminton tournament was organized by the school and around 50 schools had participated. Dhoni was in the team and he entered the finals too. He invited Kulbinder for viewing the match. The game was in its final stage when Dhoni tried lifting a shot, which led to the shuttlecock crossing the court and landing outside the stadium. He lost the match and his coach was very angry. But it was Kulbinder who brainwashed Dhoni and made him realize his interest in cricket. Kulbinder is still poor and still Dhoni is indebted to him. He offered lakhs of Rupees to his friend but Kulbinder didn’t accept money. Instead he told Dhoni to get 320 cricket stumps for him so that a fence can be constructed around the house. So this is the reason why Dhoni is collecting it.
